Dem Days Was Hell: Recorded Testimonies of Former Slaves in the United States

Last updated on: February 7, 2018 at 10:32 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Race based slavery built the United States. Northern states made money on the slave trade. Delaware kept slavery until the end of the Civil War. Southern states embraced slavery and built a culture around racism and the superiority of the white race. Is this heritage dead? Not when Christian leaders mock “Black” diction used by employees or strip diversity statements from hiring practices. Not when a Christian university uses the soundtrack of Gone with the Wind and the opening of the... Read more

“The Post” and Our Times

Last updated on: February 7, 2018 at 9:59 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Big business papers like The Post will go all first-amendment when their favored team is out. Read more

Hospitality, Gardening, and Poetry: Be Anne Spencer

Last updated on: February 2, 2018 at 12:18 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

A few of us are called to be Jeremiah, but most of us cannot live that way. We cannot live long or happily staring at what is going wrong without breaking. Some of us simply become too discouraged and the rest become like what they hate. We must, on occasion, speak up about bad ideas, but live our life (as we can) creating beauty. Anne Spencer is an American model for this Christian attitude. Her times were bad, and Anne Spencer... Read more

On the Exile and Finding Home

Last updated on: February 2, 2018 at 11:36 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

America is my home. After visiting, reading, studying, I have come to particularly love Mongolia, the UK, and Russia, but I could never be Mongolian, British, or Russian. Not perhaps because I would not find a welcome from the generous people of those nations, but because I am an American so deeply that I would never get the folkways of any other place right. It is too late for me to leave and I have never wished to do so... Read more

Psalms of Praise (A Movement Primer)- A Board Book for Baby Believers!

Last updated on: February 12, 2018 at 9:35 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

The reality of God, like the reality of air, water, and ideas, hits us from birth. I was there for the birth of five babies (one born into Paradise) and they were a revelation of divine goodness each time. The next births in our lives will be grandchildren, though not yet . . . sigh. Mistakes were made in our parenting, as the politicians say, but one of the things we got right was surrounding our kids with books. Buy all... Read more

Jenny Lind and The Greatest Showman on Earth

Last updated on: April 23, 2018 at 2:44 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

If at every moment during The Greatest Showman, one forgets the actual P.T. Barnum, then the movie with his name in it is splendid. Since most people know nothing about Barnum other than that his name used to be on a circus, this is not difficult for a typical audience. Most of my students have never even been to a circus! I knew too much about Barnum and so I struggled. Still, this is an entertaining motion picture, almost an excellent show.... Read more

The Beloved Unknown and Education

Last updated on: January 31, 2018 at 9:17 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Learning, real education, is a product of the love of wisdom, a desire that cannot be satisfied with anything less than whatever will satisfy. We long for wisdom, but wisdom is hard to find! Does wisdom exist? Love is of something a young man conceded to Socrates in the Symposium (199D). We do not just love, we love something. Sometimes that something is different than we believe, but some sufficient cause must have produced this love of wisdom. While this is... Read more

Learning to Fight Racist Education: Dialog with the Work of Carter Woodson

Last updated on: January 29, 2018 at 10:13 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Carter G. Woodson demonstrated that racists kept African-Americans in a subservient state after Empancipation by using twisted education. An entire group of Americans were educated to work for the “white race”. Self-confidence, reason, and curiousity were both intentionally undermined through a miseducational program. Reading one of his works suggested to me that these same techniques are still used in schools today, but for an even broader group of people . I don’t “do” comments on this site, because I find Facebook... Read more

The Marks of a Bad Education (Carter G. Woodson)

Last updated on: January 27, 2018 at 6:28 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Imagine education designed to put you in chains. Plato described it (Republic VII) and Carter G. Woodson fought it and knew in part how to defeat it. Racism in America (within my own lifetime) was a central feature of the academic curriculum in government schools. This has not ended. In my own career, I have seen excellent faculty denigrated and ultimately let go, because they were too “black.” If you have not, pause. Think. We have made great strides over the... Read more

Myths, Equality, the State, and Society

Last updated on: January 28, 2018 at 11:32 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Here is a sad fact: I am much slower than I was when I was young. If speed is required to get out a building, then I am in trouble. That was not always true for me and so points to a general truth: people get slower as we get older. Another general truth is that speed does not matter, except when it does. I am not equal to the fast. Thank God many religious cultures, including Christianity, and some... Read more